SPITZ: Another March, another round of madness in the air

Friday

Mar 8, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 8, 2013 at 8:04 AM

The annual March Madness rituals of studying stats for brackets and forming office pools are about the only signs of rational behavior to be found.

We've got Mother Nature/climate change/karma messing with us at every turn. We've got a veritable perfect storm of dysfunction in Washington. We've got the CEO of one of the biggest players in the online universe putting the kibosh on employees using online tools to work from home.

Julia Spitz/Daily News staff

Some things in life are logical and predictable. Then there's March.

The annual March Madness rituals of studying stats for brackets and forming office pools are about the only signs of rational behavior to be found.

We've got Mother Nature/climate change/karma messing with us at every turn. We've got a veritable perfect storm of dysfunction in Washington. We've got the CEO of one of the biggest players in the online universe putting the kibosh on employees using online tools to work from home.

And we've got a new list of rules for air travelers to abide by: Knives will be now OK to have handy at your seat; shampoo still poses a vast risk to safety.

Maybe my hackles are up after recently being pulled out of line at Washington's Dulles International. Something was mysteriously detected in the back pocket of my jeans. No matter how hard the TSA agents and I tried to discern what it could be that distressed the full-body scanner, we found nothing. Not even lint or something else equally suspicious like a tissue or folded boarding pass.

When a patdown still turned up nothing, I thought I was in the clear. But maybe there was a high alert on people fitting the description of aging soccer moms that day and security wasn't about to take any chances with someone who fit that profile to a T. So they swabbed my hands for residue of explosives/gun powder/other lethal stuff.

In the few seconds it took to determine I was clean, I'd already envisioned a scenario in which I'd undoubtedly used a grocery cart at the local Safeway right after someone fresh from a day at the shooting range, and would never be able to prove it was some random stranger, not me, responsible for failing this test, and, if that was the case, I might as well just get used to the idea of a new home at Gitmo.

But at least, after all that, I had some comfort in believing my fellow passengers were as unarmed as I was.

As part of this month's pervasive air of lunacy, the Transportation Security Administration has decided small pocketknives, pool cues, ski poles, golf clubs (two clubs per person) and certain baseball bats will be copacetic carry-on. They say it will allow screeners to focus on the real bad stuff, such as shampoo and suspicious types like me, and less on things that pose no significant threat. It's a little hard to envision how having knives, which will undoubtedly need to be checked for size, and all the sports equipment being added to the conveyor belt will ensure an easier pass through security for the average traveler. It's also hard to envision none of these items being used as a weapon in the melees destined to break out as more stuff vies for inches of space in overhead bins. Particularly if the predictions of massive TSA employee furloughs due to the sequester cuts come true.

I guess it all makes sense in a month that makes no sense.

In the same way it make sense that we give $250 million in aid to Egypt while closing 173 air traffic control towers across America because of budget cuts.

In the same way it makes sense Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's message to employees is they've got to get off the Internet and get back into their cubicles if they want to keep their jobs.

March is the traditional month of of madness. It's just super-sized itself this year.

Julia Spitz can be reached at 508-626-3968 or jspitz@wickedlocal.com. You can also read the Spitz Bits blog at www.metrowestdailynews.com/blogs/spitzbits and follow tweets at twitter.com/SpitzJ_MW.

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